St. Martin Parish takes part in Louisiana’s mosquito surveillance network through a structured, data-driven arbovirus monitoring program. Instead of maintaining its own in-house department, the parish works with Cajun Mosquito Control of New Iberia to handle field collection, local tracking, and response efforts.
The parish monitors 27 strategic trap sites across the region, using a mix of CDC Gravid Traps and light traps to collect mosquitoes for analysis. CDC Gravid Traps are especially important because they target the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, which is the primary West Nile virus vector in Louisiana.
Mosquitoes collected from St. Martin Parish are frozen, sorted into pools, and shipped weekly to the Louisiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at LSU for testing. This testing helps determine whether active viruses are present in the local mosquito population.
